LAS CRUCES - Money to design a downtown parking garage tops the list of Legislature funding request priorities approved by the Las Cruces City Council on Monday.

The parking garage was one of 10 priorities costing $12.8 million that the City Council approved as legislative funding requests.

The city will seek $2.5 million from the New Mexico Legislature when it meets beginning in January to fund designs for a five-story parking garage that will have 400 parking spaces and a mixture of uses on the ground floor.

The garage will be built on a city-owned lot in the downtown area, most likely at the corner of Church Street and Griggs Avenue. There is currently a surface parking lot in that location.

Construction of the garage is projected to cost $18.9 million, but that money will be sought in a future funding request. City officials on Monday did not offer a timetable on exactly when the project might be completed.

City officials view construction of a parking garage as integral to efforts to revitalize downtown Las Cruces, but it remains to be seen whether there will be sufficient demand for parking downtown to justify building the garage.

City staff recommended the 10 priorities, incorporating 17 different projects, from a much longer wish list that contained 29 projects estimated to cost $42.2 million.

Council did not make any changes from the staff-recommended priorities and approved the list by a 6-1 vote. Only Mayor Pro Tem Gill Sorg voted against the resolution establishing the priorities. It wasn’t clear why.

Larry Horan, who works as a lobbyist for the city in Santa Fe, said he is optimistic about the possibilities for the city to obtain funding for its priority projects. He said that the state has more money than usual for such purposes because of growth in the oil and gas industry.

“The state really is rolling in dough,” Horan said. “The good news is there’s a lot more money. The bad news is most of it’s probably already been spent.”

The other legislative funding request priorities approved by the Council on Monday, in order of priority, are: